I am lying low at the moment. I am under a blanket. I feel distinctly blanket-ish.

I am doing a lot of reading. I have recently been reading William Morris’s very strange utopian novel News from Nowhere and H.G. Wells’ possibly even stranger Tono-Bungay. I am currently reading The Suburban Swindle a new book of short stories by an emerging US writer, Jackie Corley, which I am reviewing for Bookmunch. Next I will be reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell.

What I am not doing much of is writing. My blog has had a lot of extra traffic since being shortlisted for the Manchester Blog Awards, and whilst it’s great to have so many people stopping in for a visit it’s also strangely unnerving. It makes it harder to write things. I think I may be suffering from a case of “blogger’s remorse”. After all, it’s one thing to write a blog when you know that not many people (and certainly not many people you know in real life) are going to be reading it, but it’s quite another when lots of people (many of whom you know) are reading it, and having opinions about it, and you will also have to go out in public and acknowledge it as your own. My superego is going slightly crazy about all this (and ever since watching Slavoj Zizek’s “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema” recently, I can’t help envisioning my superego as looking like Groucho Marx, which makes it extra weird). It is barking a lot of words at me in a very loud voice. Some of the words are things like “ridiculous” and “stupid” and “inane” and “twee” and “annoying”. It’s basically telling me that everyone is going to point and laugh at me, and then I’ll do something hugely embarrassing, and probably that all my clothes will also somehow fall off as well, in a general nightmare-type way.

However, I am not going to be defeated by my superego, even if it does closely resemble Groucho Marx. In fact I am going to dare its disapproval, so just watch this space...

I really like these "advice to sink in slowly" posters designed by recent and emerging graduates of University College Falmouth for the purpose of passing on advice and inspiration to first year students. A poster is given as a welcome gift to every new student when they enrol, but anyone can buy them on the advice to sink in slowly website. I’ve just treated myself to one of their posters (which arrived accompanied by a beautiful double-sided print by David Mathews and Temujin Doran) but it was very difficult to choose just one from the selection of goodies on offer!

Posters shown are by Jane Laurie ("Be Yourself"), Temujin Doran ("Learn an Instrument"), Carys Williams ("Collaborate") and Jasmine Foster ("Work Outside")

Autumn is really here now. I can smell it in the air. I like autumn. I like crispy early mornings, wearing boots and woolly tights, brisk walks, falling leaves, cosy jumpers and eating sustaining things like stew. I especially like that ‘back to school’ feeling of really getting down to business, a certain sense of purpose that comes along with the new stationery - fresh notebooks and really sharp pencils. It’s a good time of year.

I have to admit though that I’m not such a fan of the torrential rain we’ve been having of late. Or of the particularly unpleasant cold which has struck me down this week - I’m writing this from my sick bed. Still there’s worse things than lying around all day feeling slightly sorry for myself, eating soup, re-reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (the perfect book for chilly autumn afternoons), and looking forward to an evening of watching entertaining TV like ‘Dog Borstal’ in my pyjamas.

In other news I’ve got a review of Taking Pictures by Anne Enright up on the lovely Transmission blog at the moment where there are also lots of other good things. Check it out here.

Some good news to brighten up a particularly grey and damp Manchester day - this blog has been shortlisted for the Manchester blog awards! It's been nominated for the categories of 'best new blog' and 'best personal blog'. Hurrah!

And hurrah also to all the other excellent blogs which have been shortlisted for this year's awards, and especially some of my personal favourites - nine chains to the moon, every day I lie a little, chicken and pies, diary of a bluestocking and quit this pampered town. You can check out the full shortlist here or there's also a list here on delicious, though I have to admit I'm still not entirely sure quite what that is.

I am an observer.

I like sitting in the window of a small cafe watching the world go by - and noticing people with particularly pretty shoes. I like sitting on the bus in the morning looking out at the rain, the changing leaves, the people just beginning their day, the shops opening, the city coming to life beyond the fog on the window. I like walking home just as dusk is falling, when the lights in the houses are switched on but the curtains aren't yet shut, catching passing glimpses of the warm yellow-lit portraits of other people's lives. I can't resist taking a sneaky peek into other shopper's trolleys at the supermarket checkout just to see what they are buying.

Most of all, I like noticing the smallest things, the things that no one else seems to be noticing (and I also like reading about the small things others have noticed and noted here and here).

Perhaps I'm just very nosy but it's amazing the things you notice when you start looking.

For example, at Carluccio's in Smithfield, London for breakfast on Sunday, I noticed...

... a Roman Catholic priest in full regalia, popping in for a quick cappuccino, presumably between masses. I'm not sure what kind of a priest he was but he had a fancy black hat with a little tassel, which naturally he removed to drink his coffee.

... two genuine pearly kings with 'Crystal Palace' embroidered on their jackets accompanied by two pearly queens in feathery hats perusing the olives in the deli before climbing into a silver Fiat and driving away.

... an extremely small schnauzer having what looked like a very exciting adventure.

... a girl with spiky hair and leggings looking equally intrigued by all this and asking everyone if she could take photographs of them.

... a group of quite silly people becoming a bit uproarious because they had noticed that the description of the mushroom risotto on the specials board appeared to read 'fresh, wild and erotic mushrooms' as opposed to 'fresh, wild and exotic mushrooms'. Actually, that was us.

I found this fragment of a page in the lane behind my house. Something about it compelled me to pick it up. I’m not sure what book it comes from but it’s very mysterious and intriguing. Finding it instantly conjured up memories of childhood adventures - I felt as if I had stumbled upon a clue, and was about to embark on a part-Famous Five, part-Nancy Drew, part-Treasure Island type quest involving lost treasure maps and strange sounds by night, enigmatic strangers and mysterious happenings. Sadly there have been no further mysterious happenings as yet. However, I’ll keep you posted...

I feel like I’m still recovering from my 36-hour dash around Liverpool for the opening of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. My feet are certainly still recovering - I think dancing in very impractical heels at the after-party at A Foundation was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back (or perhaps hoof, in this case?).

Anyway, today I am resting. Currently, I am horizontal, or at least as horizontal as it is possible to be whilst typing.

This year’s Biennial explores the theme MADE UP: the power and richness of the artistic imagination, and the ability of art to transport us to alternative realities. There’s lots of fantastic work to see in both the city’s galleries and public realm spaces, engaging and experimenting with notions of fiction, fantasy, make-believe, myth, spectacle, and the tensions between the real and the unreal. I’ve still got lots to see, but here are a few highlights from my fast-paced, foot-destroying tour on Friday:

MADE UP at The Bluecoat is an enjoyable exhibition exploring the relationship between fantasy and everyday life. Sarah Sze’s installation in The Vide is constructed from a series of banal everyday materials which come together to create a fascinating fragmentary landscape resembling both an intricate sculpture and the residue of a whirlwind or explosion. In the upper gallery, Tracey Moffat’s First Jobs depicts the artist undertaking a series of odd jobs from working as a receptionist through to manning the production line at a pineapple cannery. Acid-bright colours transform these mundane images of workplaces associated with boredom and low-pay into a candy-hued, nostalgic vision of the past. Meanwhile, the wonderful Barefoot Lone Pilgrim (aka artist David Blandy) documents his spiritual journey in search of ‘mythical’ American soul singer Mingering Mike through drawings, artefacts and a brilliant Monkey-inspired video, conflating real life and imaginary adventures and identities. Garbage Day by The Royal Art Lodge - a collective of six artists including Marcel Dzama who are known for producing eccentric collaborative works referencing everything from comics through to science fiction - is a natural companion to Blandy’s work, sharing his playful sense of humour. This installation presents a series of over 200 small panels that lead the viewer around the gallery, offering us a series of quirky stories and surreal characters, characterised by bright colours and a naive, illustrative style.

The MADE UP theme continues at Tate Liverpool where curator Laurence Sillars has taken ‘between the real’ as the starting point for a diverse selection of commissions encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing, video and installation. Artists including Adrian Ghennie and Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler penetrate the layers of histories, narratives and memories, whilst works like Omer Fast’s darkly comic video Take A Deep Breath playfully subvert the boundaries between fact and fiction. My personal highlight of the Tate show was The Drawing Room - a gallery space bringing together a wide selection of work by four artists who use drawing as their primary practice. Amongst them, Charles Avery’s fascinating images document the landscapes and inhabitants of an imaginary island partially inspired by childhood memories, whilst the wonderful Rachel Goodyear’s uncanny and beautiful drawings are resonant with myth and fairy-tale.

FACT and Open Eye Gallery both also have intriguing exhibitions exploring the theme MADE UP: FACT's Creature Creation Station in particular is well worth a visit, offering visitors the chance to re-imagine themselves as a strange, otherworldly creature, whilst upstairs in the bar, Lisa Reihana’s Colour of Sin: Headcase version 2005 invites us to listen to a series of conflicting stories piped through retro 1970s hairdryers.

Meanwhile, in the city’s public spaces, the former ABC cinema on Lime Street is the perfect location for Annette Messenger’s ghostly theatrical installation La Dernière Séance, whilst the back room of The Vines pub, which mixes fruit machines with opulent chandeliers, is a fabulous setting for Gabriel Lester’s film The Last Smoking Flight: images of floating clouds and wafting tobacco smoke are captured and reflected in a succession of mirrors around the room. A little further down the street, Manfredi Beninati’s new site-specific commission offers us a tantalising and uncanny glimpse of a secret life between the facade of an abandoned building covered with posters: a gap in the hoarding allows visitors to peep into an apparently empty apartment, where the remains of breakfast are still on the table and a newspaper lies on the floor. It’s still early days for Yoko Ono’s Liverpool Skyladder, an installation situated in the beautiful ruined church of St. Luke’s, which invites visitors to donate stepladders to create a ‘forest of steps’ reaching up to the sky, but it will be interesting to see how it develops as more ladders arrive. And of course, Richard Wilson’s impressive and wonderfully hypnotic Turning the Place Over is an absolute must-see.

This year's Biennial has received some mixed reviews: Charlotte Higgins, writing for The Guardian blogs, criticises it as "a patchy event" with "an awful lot of dull, indifferent or bad stuff going on that left me feeling underwhelmed." Personally, I can't agree: far from being indifferent or dull, there's no doubt in my mind that the Biennial has been a real highlight of Capital of Culture, and would absolutely recommend everyone to visit. Just make sure you remember to wear comfortable shoes.